


A Love Story In Reverse

by lesbianjanecrocker (fumiko6)



Series: Fragments and Passages [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: (kind of), Ambiguous/Open Ending, Doomed Timelines, Dream Bubbles, F/F, Gen, Memory Loss, No Quadrants Here, Not Canon Compliant - The Homestuck Epilogues, Not Epilogue Compliant, Sadstuck, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-27
Updated: 2019-10-27
Packaged: 2021-01-02 17:57:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21165779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fumiko6/pseuds/lesbianjanecrocker
Summary: You wake up in an unfamiliar world, without a name or memories, with nothing but an inexplicable hatred, and the sounds of an unfamiliar name from your lips.





	A Love Story In Reverse

You wake up under a sky stained with the color of your blood.  
  
You look down at your gray hands, and use them to feel the horns on your head. They are familiar, so familiar. You pat down your messy hair, take off and put on your glasses, let your vision blur and refocus. Yes, you exist after all. Then you look at your vestments. All remnants of a life lived and yet... who are you? What are you? No memories, no thoughts save an inexplicable hatred, and the sounds of the last name from your lips.  
  
There are no suns or moons or stars above, just a diffuse orange glow amidst a cloudless cerulean sky. It is warm and physically comfortable. You are on a beach, a strip of golden sand bordering what appears to be an endless expanse of blue ocean. Something is wrong with this scene, but you are unable to comprehend why. It feels vulnerable here, but what do you have to fear?  
  
The beach is interspersed with black spheres. They are solid, the size of your palm, with no texture or markings. You pick up one of the spheres, and the rest disappear. You gaze into it, and the memories return, like a trickle filling your mind. You collapse, as another mind merges with your own.

* * *

  
  
You had a name once; it doesn't matter anymore. None of it does.  
  
What matters is when you met her. It was when you were only three sweeps old.  
  
Of course no one desired to be in your presence. You had gained a reputation within your childish game of violent preparation for the cruel world in which you came into being. Whispers followed you on the chat servers, telling of how culling was your avocation and death was your only companion.  
  
It was all correct, to be fair. And you didn't exactly discourage the rumors.  
  
She had no such fear. She was a lowblood, with her fluffy hair and curved horns and constant smiles, but she was fearless, not heeding the warnings and whisperings. "Don't you know about me?" you yelled. "Don't you know I'm a ruthless murderer????????" She simply smiled and shrugged. "Don't you know that I could murder you and nothing would happen to me?," you said. "That my lusus would praise me for it?" She responded by saying, "Hey, I'll take a chance. Everything dies eventually."  
  
She was the first friend you ever had.

* * *

  
  
You wake up with your back on the warm sand. The sky is turning orange as the diffuse light gradually changes its hue. You're not sure how long it's been. No hunger, no thirst, no fatigue. This isn't your world anymore, is it? What is it that you're supposed to do here? Is there a purpose to you existing here, wandering about an unknown world?  
  
All that remains of you are your memories of that girl. But why? What made her so special? What made her the focal point of your memories?  
  
Inland, away from the ocean, is a copse of forest. Palm trees with great leaves tower toward the sky. You follow a path through the forest, winding around tree trunks and boulders. A red light flickers in the distance, always ahead of you, a beacon pulling you forward. You follow the light as the sky dims, through an untrodden dirt path.  
  
The path emerges into a clearing atop a cliff. A ring of white sand circles a lighthouse clad in gray stone. A pitch black portal opens at the base, where a red light flickers within, like a candle in the darkness. It draws you in, and even if you forced yourself to move away (why would you?), your body cannot help but follow the flickering light.  
  
Your corporeal form is dissolved and reconstituted. You don't feel a thing, even as your constituent bits are torn up and reassembled. Now you are in an unknown hive. It's far from the opulent lifestyle that you remembered from your wrigglerhood. The floor is pockmarked concrete, with nothing soft in sight. A bare lighting apparatus hangs from the ceiling. A small table is surrounded by rickety chairs, on one of which sits a girl. She wears a red outfit emblazoned with a cog, with wings protruding from her back, and a hood from which her curved horns poke through.  
  
She is the girl from your memories, but older as you seem to be.  
  
"Do you remember?", she asks.  
  
"What the heck do you mean?", you say, sounding more agitated than intended.  
  
She stares at you, her smile never shifting. "So you don't remember? Maybe I'll have to make you."  
  
"Wait. What-"  
  
You are lying inside a cave, on a stone slab, facing the stalactite-covered ceiling. You cannot move. You feel the blood draining from your body, your consciousness dimming. Your eyes close. And then you wake up back in the hive.  
  
It is only then that you realize that you are dead.  
  
"Hmm. That was too soon. It started way earlier. Back you go then."  
  
You do not have time to ruminate on your death, as your consciousness is flung once more into the past.

* * *

  
  
You were five when you decided that she would die.  
  
It wasn't the first time you had culled, and you had culled others for far lesser transgressions than the ones she committed against you. But this was different. She was your friend. More than that, perhaps you always had a flushed crush on her.  
  
You should have known that nothing good ever lasts.  
  
It started with you. You found new friends to play your games. Or acquaintances rather. Or were they your friends? You probably wished they were. It probably doesn't matter anymore. All you recall are the screams, which tormented you until you couldn't stand it any longer.  
  
And then what? You remember now, but you wish you couldn't.  
  
In retrospect it was entirely your fault. It's easier to feel something akin to guilt after you've died.

* * *

  
  
The memories have returned, yet, you still feel hollow, empty, devoid of character.  
  
"So where are we now?", you ask.  
  
She shrugs. "Are you going to apologize?", she says, ignoring your question.  
  
"For what? Murdering you in cold blood? How about let's call it even."  
  
"I suppose that's good enough for now," she says, smiling again. And then the hive around you disappears. The air shimmers, the walls dissolving into the walls of the cave in which you died. She is still there. You are still there, no trace of blood on you, no trace of blood or body on the stone tablet beneath you.  
  
"We're waiting," she says. "It's all going to end soon. Come with me." She offers you her hand. You take it. You realize that you had never held her hand this way before, ever, not even in the now-distant past. So you take it, not particularly caring where you would be lead. What does it matter now, anyway?  
  
You are flying now, cascading through the sky of your world. You are beyond it now, gliding past the atmosphere as if it were nothing. You have entered a starless expanse, a place of pure black. You move through the expanse of paradox space, guided only by her grip.  
  
You're holding her hand. It's a strange, not unpleasant feeling.  
  
"Hey, you're really cool," you say, more to pass the time than anything. "I was really fucked up back then, huh? If I hadn't killed you maybe we would've had... something... "  
  
"The universe is over," she says. "All of the universes that we knew. And so are you."  
  
"Uh-huh. Yeah. So what? I'm still me, right?"  
  
"That's the problem. There's still more you have to learn."  
  
The space around you becomes a prism. Shards of light grow around you, ensconcing the two of you in a cocoon, solidifying into glass screens or mirrors with forms growing and reflecting and mutating.  
  
She lets go.  
  
"You'll have to see this," she says, flying and merging into the glass. "You have to go through this by yourself."  
  
"Wait-" you try to shout, but no voice comes.  
  
And then she disappears, dematerializing without a trace, leaving you inside a prison of mirrors.

* * *

  
  
You see forms that are you, but not *you*. You see scenes that you half-remember. You see the sunrise on your homeworld, as something that looks like you barely make it into its hive before being consumed. You see other versions of you on other worlds, some peaceful, some even more torturous than your own. You see other presents, ones in which you did not perish, ones in which you came back to life. You see yourself cut down in other ways, by enemies and friends alike. You were never good at distinguishing the two. There is one world in which you let the remainder of your friends die so that you could kill your mutual enemy, who ends up killing you anyway. There is another in which you survive, become a leader of your troops, and die in heroic glory, or perhaps completely pointlessly. It's hard to tell. You see yourself die more times in which you can count, in ways more brutal than you had ever imagined.  
  
You see other versions of *her*, too. But not so many. It seems that she's better at evading death.  
  
Nothing feels real anymore. You are truly, thoroughly broken. It's all a game, isn't it?

* * *

  
  
The prism unravels. The darkness returns. You see her in the distance, the only source of light, slowy approaching.  
  
No trace of you, the you that Is here right now, will be left. No trace of you will ever exist. At this thought you feel rage, not the inexplicable hatred that you were born into this world with, but a genuine anger, mixed with despair. You hate the thought of oblivion.  
  
But you're not the "real" you, are you? You're just another useless offshoot, a castoff, a remnant that doesn't even have all of the memories of the "real" you. If the real "you" saw you, all she would see would be a pathetic husk, an empty vessel that happened to look somewhat like her. You want to cry, but this non-corporeal form has no tear ducts.  
  
She is close enough to touch. Close enough to fight.  
  
"Aren't you gonna finish what you've started?", you ask.  
  
She laughs. "What's the point? You've been dead for a few eternities!"  
  
"Oh. Okay."  
  
There are things you want to say. Images from the history of your brief existence flash. You'll never say these things.  
  
"You mean... you don't hate me anymore?"  
  
"What's the point? The time for hate is long gone. When this place comes apart, do you really want hate to be the last feeling on your mind?"  
  
"Maybe... It would still be feeling something."  
  
"Then feel free to hate me," she says, "if that makes you feel any better."  
  
You swipe with your claws towards her. They pass right through. She laughs.  
  
"Sorry. I want to stay alive just a bit longer :D"  
  
Your rage pushes you forward, swiping, punching, kicking into nothingness as you pass through her. You feel the laws of physics changing for your benefit. Your momentum carries you forward into the vacuum, and there will be nothing stopping you from an eternity in this endless emptiness. This is not what you wanted. You are in motion so you will forever stay in motion unless a force is enacted upon you.  
  
She is that force. She grabs your wrists and you can no longer move. All of a sudden you feel tired.  
  
"Sorry," you say, for perhaps the first time in _*your*_ life.

* * *

  
  
The two of you are on the ruins of your homeworld, or some memory projection of such. The green and pink moons glisten in the sky, illuminating the desert plains beneath your collapsed hive. You each have your own sitting stone, close enough that your knees almost touch.  
  
"So what's the point?," you ask. "What's the point of bringing me back? Am I supposed to do something? Was there any point in all the torture?"  
  
She pauses for a moment. "It was inevitable."  
  
"That's it? There's no other reason behind it all? No fight coming up? It wasn't something you could have stopped?"  
  
"There is something else coming," she says. "But it won't be for a while. Things outside your control are already being set in motion."  
  
"What things? Something that needs me to keep on existing?"  
  
A longer pause this time. "I think so. But there's nothing you can do right now."  
  
You exhale, and lie back, staring at the imaginary projections of stars in the sky. "So we wait?"  
  
"What else is there to do?"  
  
You shrug. There are things you would rather do, but they are unmentionable.  


* * *

  
  
The world is shattering.  
  
Cracks fracture the sky, growing like vines, or slow bolts of lightning, flashing white against a black background. They form between you and the moons, without a sound. They grow, inexplicably and inexorably.  
  
"Come closer," she says. It has been what felt like hours since you last spoke, but it has probably been not nearly so long.  
  
"For what?", you mutter.  
  
"Put your head here." She points towards her lap.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Before the world ends, don't you want to be a little more comfortable?"  
  
You sit up and stare at her. "You can't be serious, can you?"  
  
"Why not? What have you got to lose?"  
  
Part of you wants to attack her once again, but you no longer have the energy.  
  
"Okay. Fine."  
  
You let your head rest on her lap. She pushes her claws through your hair.  
  
"Ow. That hurts."  
  
"Sorry! Haha!"  
  
She rubs the base of your horns now. It feels better than you would like. You could stay like this until the world ends, or whatever comes next.  
  
"So why are you suddenly caring about me?", you ask. "Seems pretty uncharacteristic of you."  
  
She is silent. The fractures are coming closer. You can no longer see the moons, as the cracks in the world grow ever larger.  
  
"It's going to be lonely out here," she says. "But we'll find each other again."  
  
"Can you cut out the cryptic bullshit for once?"  
  
"No. Haha!"  
  
There is nothing anymore, not even the black of the sky. Just you, and her hooded smiling face. There is nowhere to run anymore. There is no need to run anymore.  
  


* * *

  
  
You wake up under a sky stained with the color of your blood.  
  
You look down at your gray hands, and use them to feel the horns on your head. They are familiar, so familiar. You pat down your messy hair, take off and put on your glasses, let your vision blur and refocus. Yes, you exist after all. Then you look at your vestments. All remnants of a life lived and yet...  
  
You see her. She is waving. You wave back.

"I told you we'll find each other again."

**Author's Note:**

> This story's structure is heavily based on my original work, [Pure Love Story](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18427118) (which was in turn loosely inspired by a Touhou doujin), but with a thin veneer of homestuck.


End file.
